Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Long long ago… very long ago there lived a landlord named Ram; He owned a fertile farm with full of mango trees. Ram and his family lived in a gated community with in the farm. Ram’s farm is known for tasty mangos, which were high priced in the market. They owned this farm for generations. The pesticide, manure used in the farm is kept as a high secret. For so many years they didn’t reveled the formulae by which they produce tasty mangos. People from neighboring villages were not permitted into the farm in order to preserve the secrecy, and also Ram’s family believed that outsiders were inferior to them and would bring impurity into the farm. So they managed all the farming activity by themselves, No outsiders were recruited as farming labor. They earned good money by selling the mangos to the rich and elite of the society. Kings and Queens ate Ram’s fruits believing it’s the best.

Time has passed and the society around Ram changed rapidly, Kingdoms vanished, new powers came in. There came better jobs than cultivating and selling Mangos. The new generation in Ram’s family joined high earning jobs in the new government, they started tasting the new life style and started migrating to new places, enjoyed powerful and respected positions. Slowly all of Ram’s DNA settled up in large cities of the world. The old mango farm is no more alive as there is no body to take care. What is left is only an empty dry land where all the trees perished.

Now all of a sudden, Ram’s successors realized that their pride in mango cultivation is lost. They understood that their traditional unique fruit is dead, No more in the list of favorite fruits in the market. So they wanted to give a rebirth to their old mango farm. They planned to utilize the mango seeds stored by their ancestor’s years ago. But all of the Ram’s kin are now settled up in better places than the old farmhouse and they don’t want to leave their present life style, so they went on to gather local villagers as farming labors so that they get a good workforce to bring back their traditional farm. But the local villagers are now busy with their own farms and are not interested in working at Ram’s farm. And for the villagers it’s their dignity which stops them from accepting the new opportunity offered by Ram’s kin, as once long back Ram’s family didn’t allowed them to work in their farm and considered them as inferior breed.

As nothing can bring the villagers to work, Ram’s kin started spreading a bunch of rumors, they said the farm is the tradition and culture for everyone in the nation, as now its dead everyone has to come and help. They also said their mango is the mother for all fruits of the world, even strawberry and lemon were created from their mango’s; NASA said their mangos can help in computer research and space research. Even then no body turned up. But still Ram’s successors are dreaming in daylight that the innocent villagers will come and work hard to bring back their traditional mango farm.

Story of Sanskrit and Brahmins

In the above mentioned story; replace ‘Mangos and Ram’ with ‘Sanskrit and Brahmins’, you’ll get an interesting social-science drama… Here you go…

Long long ago… very long ago there lived a group of close circuit people named Brahmins whose language was Sanskrit. They lived in separate livelihood called Agrahars or Agraharam. Indigenous people lived outside the Agrahars speaking their own languages other than Sanskrit. Brahmins created and owned so many religious literatures written in Sanskrit, They established themselves as the superior priest clan. Sanskrit was used in all their religious ceremonies; they spread their religion among the indigenous people and also their rulers. Their literatures mentioned four classes of society one below to another (Manusmriti – ‘Laws Of Manu’). And brahmins held the religious and cultural supremacy of the 4 classes. And for generations they never shared their literatures with the other 3 classes of people, because they felt that would shake the rigidity of the four classes. In order to keep others away from the religious literature and the priest job, they blocked people from learning Sanskrit. They projected Sanskrit as god’s own language (Deva Bhasha), they isolated Sanskrit from non-brahmins as they felt that would save the purity of gods own language. Sanskrit enjoyed the status of official religious language and the language of the elite.

Time has passed and the society around Agrahars changed rapidly, Kingdoms vanished, new powers came in, the land became a colony of the British Empire. There came better jobs than being a priest. The new generation of brahmins joined high earning jobs in the new government. Brahmins became lawyers and clerks for the British Empire. Centuries passed and the land was freed from the British. A new Indian nation was born. And this time there were lot more opportunities in government jobs, politics, bureaucracy, etc. They stated tasting the new life style and started migrating to new places, enjoyed powerful and respected positions. Slowly the entire brahmin DNA settled up in large cities of the world. And their old language is no more alive as there is no body to take care. What is left is only a dry literature not read by anyone.

Now all of a sudden, the new generation brahmins realized that their pride in Sanskrit is lost. They understood that their traditional language is dead, No more in the list of spoken languages. So they wanted to give a rebirth to Sanskrit. They planned to utilize the literatures written by their ancestor’s years ago. But all of the brahmins are now settled up in better places than their old priest job and they don’t want to leave their present life style, so they went on to gather non-brahmins as new students for Sanskrit so that they get a good population to bring back their traditional language to the main stream. But today the non-brahmins are now busy with their own language and are not interested in learning a dead language like Sanskrit. And also for the non-brahmins it’s their dignity which stops them from accepting Sanskrit, as once long back brahmins didn’t allowed them to learn and considered them as inferior breed.

As nothing could bring people to learn Sanskrit, the brahmin writers and intellectuals started spreading a bunch of rumors through mass media, their propaganda was also fuelled by brahmin front organizations of Sangh Parivar (RSS, VHP, BJP and so on), They said Sanskrit is the tradition and culture for everyone in the nation, as now it’s dead everyone has to come and help. They also said their Sanskrit is the mother for all languages of the world, even C++ and Java were created from their Sanskrit; NASA said Sanskrit can help in computer research and space research. Even then no body turned up. But still brahmin powers (Sangh Parivar) are dreaming in daylight that the innocent people will come and work hard to give life to Sanskrit.

Key Lessons / Takeaway

Sanskrit is not the culture and tradition of whole Indian sub-continent; actually it’s only a brahmin tradition and culture.

Sanskrit is already dead. And it was the brahmins who let it die.

Sanskrit was never been a mass language of communication during any period of history, it was only practiced during religious ceremonies by brahmins. And brahmins used other languages to communicate with rest of the people.

Sanskrit is not the mother of all languages, only a bunch of north Indian languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi etc are derived from Sanskrit.

And Sanskrit is not a base language (Proto-Language) like Latin, Chinese or Tamil.

Anyone can learn Sanskrit by interest, but should not be carried away by the myth that it is superior to all languages.

It’s a good idea to revive Sanskrit, But it’s the brahmins who have to make the effort. It should not be done by the government spending people’s tax money (Why should you pay somebody’s food bill).

Enough for this session, See you again with another stuff on Sanskrit.

Equality of mankind can never be achieved unless there is equal education.

You can really feel the need for an uniform syllabus for India if you underwent a 12 year schooling in a normal government school and then sit in the IIT entrance examination…. you can really feel heat of a deprived childhood where there are two different worlds in the same country and multiple standards and more than one syllabus.

The athlete in the inner track will always have an advantage than the one in the outer track in a concentric elliptical track, That’s why they are placed one behind another at the start of the race. But in India children from different economic background go to different standards of schools, but when they are out for building a career they are evaluated by a common scale which is easy for few and a over dose for the others. A poor student from a ‘State Board’ corporation school and a rich student from an ‘ICSE’ boarding school are asked to face the same test when they want to jump into the likes of IIT or IISE.

We are living in a country where education was once forbidden to the majority, Yep the Hindu law allowed only Bhramins to learn. If you are a non Bhramin its illegal to learn in the old system. It was the European missionaries who brought schools where every caste can step in. The colonial lords used schools as a mean to spread Christianity, but on the other side those schools allowed everybody to taste what is modern education. It made a starting point for all non Bhramins to realize that they too can learn and go to a dignified job. Then after Independence too poverty forced many lower caste/class kids to go for work. There was a change made by leaders like Kamaraj and Periyar who were instrumental in implementing free education. Kamaraj’s policies ensured a school with in every 5 KM radius. And to attract children from the lower income group to the schools he implemented the ‘Free Meal Scheme’ at all schools. In the middle, the 50’s saw the cruel and un-scientific Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy) by C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). The Dravidian movement was so powerful to trash the Kula Kalvi Thittam which was totally aimed at preserving the caste hierarchy. This state has gone through a long trail to bring education to the majority. We have to thank the efforts of all those who worked hard to reach this point where we are today. We need to take the struggle forward…, need to finish the task left out by our predecessors. The task of quality education for all, A same book for the rich and the poor, Same education for the rural and urban, An uniform syllabus for the entire nation. Today in our times every kid goes to school, but there is a standard forced on the children by the system. The system which advocates a different stranded for the Rich, the Middle class and a sub standard education for the poor. Mostly the quality of your education is directly linked to your economic class. You can go to an expensive boarding school or a normal matriculation or even to a government school with few hundreds of rupee as fee, it all depends on the affordability of your parents. These schools not only differ in their look & feel, there is a difference in the quality of education as they follow different syllabus.

It really sounds good when we say “ Equal education for the rich and poor ” But there are few people out there who oppose it. Yeah.. Its strange but true. There are two types of people opposing the Uniform Syllabus, the first is those who are making money by selling education. Those who own the expensive private schools where the fees varies from tens of thousands to few lakhs of rupees. The second is the newly empowered upper middle class living in the metros, who believe that their children will have an added advantage by studying a syllabus meant for the minority who can afford to pay more. These people are the source for all the rumors which defame the concept of uniform syllabus. Its obvious that the private school owners will oppose the process to equalize the standard of education as it directly affects their income, but its hard to understand the second category of the upper middle class parents who think that they are the most intelligent in this world. They just want their children to achieve an extra milestone just by using their money and not by merit. They have the cruel attitude to stop the poor from learning the same as their children. What type of people they are !… In bus, train, office and every where they spread their comments to confuse the public and they’ve made an impression as if the newly framed uniform syllabus in Tamilnadu is of low standards. If the uniform syllabus is really low of standards we can refine it in the days to come, but we cannot have different syllabus for different schools. When government school/college students are facing lathi charge from Jeyalalitha’s police for supporting Uniform syllabus, there are people living in the high raised flats of Chennai (whose kids go to the expensive Matriculation or other schools meant for higher income group) opposing it. They firmly feel that their children will never be the elite if they compete in the open world where there is a uniform syllabus and an equal standard. Its nothing wrong in pulling their collars & slap them in public.